Tech Time-Out

On the heels of Friday’s Louis C.K. excerpt as galvanized by Gawker and repurposed right here, another interesting perspective on technology and our interaction with it appeared in the Sunday, September 22 issue of The New York Times. In a story titled, “Step Away From The Phone“, the author alludes to a backlash toward the use of our tech toys using a crop of New Yorkers as examples for her piece.

While one Vanity Fair writer plays “the phone stack game” before dinner with friends wherein every participating member of the dinner must put their phones in a pile until the meal’s end, another subject keeps her phone in a tin jar until after dinner post work. One designer shuts her phone to spend time with her baby and still another keeps his phone in a separate room while he sleeps.

The strategies are smart but are they being put to practice as diligently as they seem?

I could have predicted that after a long string of stories on the topic of: OMG! Technology! What is it doing to us!, eventually the backlash toward its omnipresence would start. Furthermore, I am wholly supportive of the disconnection effort. It’s good for your mind and will help better maintain real-life relationships with gusto.

It just seems unlikely that the examples chronicled in the piece are as true as they make themselves out to be. Our relationship with technology is no doubt changing but I’m pretty sure we’re still in that in-between, aware-I’m-an-addict-but-not-quite-healed-yet phase of mock-it-til-you’re-caught-with-it. Sure, we’re aware that the dependence is becoming a social deficieny but are we really at the point of recovery just yet? On the road, maybe, but frankly, I still see a lot of crash and burning to be had before we’re actually communicating like viscerals humans again.

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nope…not there yet…DC is notorious for the number of folks for whom “acting like they are more important than other folks” is a job…its what they do for a living…so i don’t see it going away (at least here) for a long time…maybe with a few of the hippie kids but no…not yet… backlash hasn’t whipped its way down here yet… 🙂
xoxo

Nothing to do with the fact that the place I live in is basically a village … but I have the opposite problem. I simply dislike phones (and the kind of communication that goes with them, obv) so I haven’t managed yet to change my emergency 10-year-old Nokia (most other grannies would steal from me, or so I am told) for a smart phone … I do hope I won’t have to too soon (I know how to use a smart phone, of course, hubby’s got one)

I earn my Euro coins by silently typing things other people have written, in a different language, and not by communicating and I need quite some electronics-free time in between all those typing marathons but even if I didn’t … I am not a phone person 🙂

NY is definitely viral when it comes to techie stuff..i remember those harsh cold nights waiting for bus after work in a long queue at Port Authority and I used be the only one actually waiting for the bus without any tech toys in my hand! even 70 year old grandma-pa’s are seen digging their eyes in ipads and iphones..
i guess being a software engg has taught me to escape the tech web and carve my little space whenever I can..